Year 8 student, Jacinta Rees, has just returned from a three-week tour of the United Kingdom and Germany, where she sang with Gondwana Voices, one of Australia’s most accomplished youth choral groups.
The choir was invited to perform Australian composer Brett Dean’s Vexations and Devotions with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and led by famed Russian conductor, Vladimir Jurowski.
Jacinta said this performance, at the Berlin Philharmonie, was one of the highlights of the tour.
“Vexations and Devotions is a really challenging work. We performed it from memory and it was recorded and broadcast on German national radio,” she said.
Jacinta was accepted into the touring choir a year ago but has been singing with the Sydney base of the group, the Sydney Children’s Choir, for five years. The trip is Jacinta’s first international tour, though she has performed nationally with Gondwana Voices, doing regional tours throughout New South Wales as well as travelling to Cairns and Tasmania. Jacinta has also been selected to sing with Opera Australia and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Jacinta, who plays oboe and cello and is a member of Meriden’s Senior School Choir, said she feels happy to have been able to travel and perform with her friends.
“I especially enjoyed seeing Buckingham Palace and all the big sights of London, staying with German families in Radeberg and Leipzig and singing with the Leipzig Children’s Chorus,” she said.
